The title track of the band’s new album, Myself in the Way, speaks to this mindset. “I can’t put myself in the way of love again,” sings Getz, “I promise I’m going to go all the way with you,” is specifically about Getz getting engaged to his longtime partner, but applies to the general outlook he had toward life in lockdown. “I was living in Sebastopol, California at the time and felt like I truly lived there for the first time since I wasn’t leaving for tour. I was able to go meditate at the Zen Buddhist dojo down the road, run and bike around the hills in Sonoma county, learn about plants and gardening, take some Spanish and arboriculture classes, and get involved with the volunteer fire department. Just do a bunch of new things to challenge and inspire me in a natural way.”
Turnover’s other members also used the time to deepen interests they hadn’t been able to fully explore before covid. Bass player Dan Dempsey was in New York City and responded to lockdown by spending more time practicing his visual art in drawing and painting. He painted the album’s cover during this period and developed a style that has become a central theme for the band in its current iteration. Drummer Casey Getz found work at a Virginia Beach state park as touring continued to be postponed. He was in search of and inspired by having a work-life balance different than he’d experienced since he was younger. Through this, he was able to nurture current relationships more and find new ones, something touring made much more difficult. This led to Casey playing drums with a group of longtime friends in Virginia Beach and further developing his drumming style – adding a new prowess for fluidity and improvisation through lengthy jam sessions with the group. Guitarist Nick Rayfield was focused on sharpening his guitar and piano playing and was able to devote energy to skateboarding and his retail business more than he had been able to for the last few years. This was also the band’s first album with Rayfield making songwriting contributions after touring with them for years as a live member, adding a new creative element to the songs.
Over 18 months Turnover weaved these individual experiences into a collective work, recording the LP over two sessions with longtime collaborator Will Yip at Studio 4. Austin is credited, for the first time, as co-producer.
“I had specific ideas for sound design on this album. I knew a lot of sounds I wanted to hear and use. We wanted everything to be able to be heard and have its own place. I was inspired by the way Magical Mystery Tour and Dark Side of the Moon sounded. We decided to go a lot wider with it and utilize panning and stereo more than we had in the past, while also wanting it to sound tighter and smaller than some of our earlier records. We were inspired by drum and bass sounds from Chic and Quincy Jones records from the 70s, so we put the drums in the control room to get them to sound smaller. We used an active pickup bass and a jazz bass to get that percussive sound from the bass so the low end wasn’t as rumbling and subby. We let the synths share some of that low end that the drums and bass gave up. Quincy’s approach to arrangements were a huge inspiration in this record as well. The horn and string lines I wanted to sound like classic era disco, mixed with modern synth and vocal sounds. I had been experimenting with my own vocal styles a lot and utilized autotune and vocoder on this album almost as instruments on certain songs as a stylistic choice.”
The band has always been DIY, but post pandemic they have taken that to a different level. They appreciate more than ever how lucky they are to get to be together and have fun creating things with their friends. They have found that they are usually best suited for executing their own vision, not only musically, but with all its accompaniments as well. For this album they made all their own videos in collaboration with friends and using Dempsey’s drawings and paintings.
Change is authentic and true to Turnover as a band and as individuals. Chart a course through their discography and find a band continually reinventing themselves with a unique artistic ambition. Myself In The Way arrives finding Turnover doing the same within their own persons, pushing the band into new and exciting parallel depths of expression.
Balance and Composure
with you in spirit, the fourth Balance and Composure LP, is an arresting, atmospheric collection of melodic post-punk and towering rock. Due out October 4 on long-time collaborator and Grammy-nominated producer Will Yip’s Memory Music, it’s the band’s first LP in eight years, and a thrilling full-length comeback after their four-year hiatus. It thunders and stirs, dipping between beautiful, crystalline arrangements and punishing, earth-shaking climaxes; in between all, a gripping, near-physical tension crackles and growls and grooves, waiting to rip open.
It’s an intensely self-reflective record for vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons, an uprooting and examination of the supports on which a life is built. Preemptive grief, wrestling with god and faith, familial responsibility, familial mortality—these are the things Simmons was carrying while writing this material. They’re also things he was trying, for better and worse, to avoid—hence the record’s title.
with you in spirit feels like the work of songwriters reaching new heights, exploring new depths. Sometimes, the record itself feels like a band grappling with its own avoidance, its own mortality, and deciding to face these things the only way they know how. Balance and Composure are with us in spirit, yes, but in the flesh, too, for now.
Horse Jumper of Love
Horse Jumper of Love thrive on patient and uncompromising songs. Thanks to frontman Dimitri Giannopoulos’ evocative lyrics and arrangements that suddenly turn from delicate to blistering, their music is full of intensity. While the Boston trio, which also includes bassist John Margaris and drummer James Doran, has stretched the fringes of indie, their latest is their most immediate yet. Out August 16 via Run For Cover Records, Disaster Trick tackles self-destructiveness with healing and heart.
Where Horse Jumper of Love’s last release 2023’s Heartbreak Rules excelled with quiet, bare-bones songwriting, Disaster Trick cranks up the volume while keeping the no-frills intimacy of the band’s catalog. Recorded at Asheville, North Carolina’s Drop of Sun Studios with producer Alex Farrar (Wednesday, Indigo De Souza), the recordings soar with searing guitars and an unshakeable rhythm section. “I tried the quiet thing on the last album and I realized there’s definitely two parts of me: I like really heavy music, and I like really gentle music,” says Giannopoulos. “The two albums I listened to the most while we were in the studio were Leonard Cohen’s Songs From a Room and Hum’s Downward is Heavenward.” This contrast between quiet and loud exists throughout Disaster Trick but it’s animated by stark emotion and straightforward, timeless songwriting.
Disaster Trick feels like a creative reset. It’s also Horse Jumper of Love distilled to their purest essence, which is partly due to Giannopoulos’ recent sobriety. “This was the first album I’ve ever done where I went into it with a very clear mind,” he says. “In the past, we would just show up at a studio, drink, and record. Here, everything felt purposeful.” With newfound energy, the band revisited old, unfinished material like “Gates of Heaven,” which dates back nearly a decade. Originally written during a period Giannopoulos describes as full of immaturity, he sings, “I am late to work again / I’m always missing something / when I walk out the door.” By focusing on a mundane moment, he highlights how self-defeating behaviors can linger.
For the band, the album marked an opportunity to strip down their songwriting to the essentials: urgent, accessible arrangements full of catharsis. “This album helped me realize that a lot of the time, simplicity is the answer,” says Giannopolous. Lead single “Wink,” captures this perfectly. When Giannopoulos sings over hushed guitars, “And your arms have never looked / More empty than they do from here,” his delivery exudes a remarkable earnestness. As the track hits a boiling point in its thunderous chorus, it’s disarmingly raw. Other songs like “Today’s Iconoclast” are imbued with wry humor, referencing both “the Amazon Basics Bible” and playing “fuck, marry, kill” in consecutive verses. Whatever the mood, Giannopoulos’ lyrical directness anchors Disaster Trick.
While in Asheville, the band enlisted collaborations from Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman as well as Squirrel Flower’s Ella Williams. Opening track “Snow Angel” kicks off with a growling, shoegaze-tinged guitar riff. It’s a heavy song that’s grounded by wistfulness. “Would you pull me a feather / From your pillow – I want to dream like you,” sings Giannopoulos. Throughout, Disaster Trick navigates uncomfortable, dark thoughts with a subtle grace. On the downtempo and compelling “Word,” Giannopoulos finds lightness in relationship malaise: “Last night we had a fight / You blamed it on the moon / But that’s not very fair to the moon.”
Disaster Trick is a dark record but there’s a glimmer of hope throughout. As he sings on “Death Spiral,” “I know it sounds dramatic / But I must describe / The way that it felt.” This gets to the core of the album: looking back on mistakes with the grace and clarity that comes from growing up. “A lot of the songs came out of this point where things in my life were going well but I couldn’t accept it,” says Giannopoulos. “I was being a brat. Disaster Trick is me cleaning up my act and reflecting on it.”